Flair Fashionary

Ever wondered when women started wearing pants and who designed them? Well, you’ll enjoy reading this weeks Fashionary as it's chock full of history! We have hems and pleats and pants this week.

Gore:

A gore is a group of panels which are stitched together and create a flare. The gore and the godet are similar in that they create body and movement in a skirt from the waist. However, as we looked at last week, the godet is inserted between panels while the gore is the panels.

Gusset:

That little strip of fabric that acts as a seat in your yoga pants or stockings, this is what that’s called. The gusset is a panel which adds extra space and eases the stress seams endure during stretching. Gussets can even be added to underarms to provide extra stretch there as well.

H-Line:

The H-Line is one of the classic ultra-femme silhouettes created by the founder of one of the biggest French fashion houses in the world, Christian Dior. This shape lengthens the legs and creates a more shapely look for the lower body. We know this skirt better as the ‘pencil skirt’ and it’s now a staple in the wardrobe of every modern woman.

Handkerchief Hems:

What did you picture when you read that? Was it a bunch of handkerchiefs sewn together to make a hem? Well, you weren’t entirely wrong. The handkerchief hemline occurs when the hem of a dress or skirt falls around the legs in triangular points like the corners of handkerchiefs.

Harem Pants:

At the start of the decade, these pants were on everyone’s must-have style lists. Every dancer ever could be found in these baggy ankle hugging pants made sometimes from patchwork fabrics, all with extra stretch. This originally Middle Eastern style, as seen on the Disney Princess Jasmine, was introduced to the Western World, or rather the Parisian World then outwards by Paul Poiret. While these pants were not very radical for us in the 21st century, back in the early 20th century, they were totally controversial. You see, women weren’t allowed to wear pants back then so they were even called the Harem ‘skirt’ to ease the public outcry. Thanks to these baggy trousers and a designer who was ahead of his time and not afraid of clamouring, women of the 1910s changed the world.